German-American Discourse on Politics and Culture

July 31, 2005

There is a story that before the German pilots bombed Guernica in April of 1937 they got together with their Spanish hosts from Franco's army for one last toast. The pilots were not that proficient in Spanish, but they joined with their Spanish comrades in a rousing "Viva la Muerte!" - Long Live Death!. Thus began the practice of Total Warfare and the military strategy of killing civilians.

There is not much left of the city of Fallujah. It is a city of death, a case study in Total Warfare as practiced by the US military. The US media - controlled by Rupert Murdoch, Disney and General Electric - dutifully reports that the city has been "liberated", the "terrorists" have been eliminated, the town is once again peaceful. But every few days they also have report that more Marines have been killed, as the "insurgency" flares up, despite the fact that Fallujah is cordened off from the outside world. The fact is, nearly all of the US journalists reporting on the War in Iraq stay safely in the US-controlled "Green Zone" in Baghdad, and don't have a clue about what is happening the country.

On rare occasions a courageous reporter does slip into Fallujah, and we are provided a glimpse of what is really going on. One brave reporter is Reiner Luyken, who filed an excellent report for Die Zeit recently. For Lyken, Fallujah represents the essence of the Iraq War, just as Guernica did for Spain 3/4 of a century ago:

David Enders, an American reporter who just returned from Fallujah, asked some Iraqi soldiers about the city:

"Falluja — death," says one of them, drawing a finger across his throat, a motion that I would like to go one day in Iraq without seeing someone make.

Fallujah - a word Americans don't think about much, but it is a word on the lips of Islamic nationalists everywhere. A word that in their minds epitomizes what George W. Bush once called a "modern crusade".

There is a another story about how a German officer in German-occupied Paris approached Pablo Picasso in his studio. When the officer saw a sketch of the Guernica painting he asked Picasso "Did you do this?" Picasso promptly replied, "No, you did."

July 29, 2005

As if we needed any clear indication that President Bush wants a CDU government in Berlin after the September 18 election. Angela Merkel sent her foreign policy expert Wolfgang Schäuble to Washington with a love letter to the Bush administration. Originally Schäuble was to meet with a the a relatively low-level liar, NSC head Stephen Hadley. Then, as a bonus, he got an audience with a world-class liar, Hadley's former boss Condoleezza "Mushroom Cloud" Rice. And then, an unhoped-for surprise - a 45-minute meeting with the Liar-in-Chief.

But, in a sign that Washington is interested in improving US-German relations should the conservatives sweep September's election as many predict, Schäuble got the red carpet treatment -- an unscheduled 45-minute meeting with President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Speaking at a press conference in Hamburg on his return, Schäuble described the atmosphere at the meeting as "very direct." The president is "a man with whom you can speak very openly," Schäuble said.

We don't have a transcript of Schäuble's meeting with President Bush, but undoubtedly he gave the president assurances that once Angela Merkel is chancellor things will return to just like the old days, where German foreign policy is made in Washington rather than Berlin. Deputy SPD Chairperson Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul had the correct interpretation about the meeting:

Oh, and it is really too bad that Schäuble neglected to ask President Bush about the fate of Murat Kurnaz, the young Turkish man from Bremen who has been held for more than three years without charges at the US military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I guess he was under orders from Mekel not to ask any questions that would upset the President - a clear signal for how German-US relations will be after the German election.

July 26, 2005

I have always been curious about Angela Merkel's background in the former GDR. Did she always have pro-American, Christian democratic beliefs? If so, did she suffer any consequences for these beliefs in the repressive GDR system? Was she spied on by the Stasi? Was she close to democratic dissidents like Wolf Biermann or Robert Havemann? Some of these questions are answered in Gerd Langguth's biography: Angela Merkel.

The key to unlocking the mystery of Angela Merkel is her father, the Protestant Minister Horst Kasner, who emigrated from West Germany to the East Zone in 1954, where he began an effort to "rehabilitate" the church - making it acceptable to the Stalinist SED ruling party. The church under Kasner thus became another instrument of state domination, and Kasner benefitted greatly from his elite status within the political apparatus. Kasner's family also reaped the benefits: luxury home, two cars (most GDR citizens had to wait years for just one Trabant), trips to Italy and other countries outside the socialist bloc. Angela was able to attend the elite school (Erweiterte Oberschule) along with the sons and daughters of important party functionaries. Langguth describes how Horst Kassner worked closely together with Stasi informant Clemens de Maiziere on forming the SED church policy. De Maiziere's son Lothar would later play a decisive role in Angela's life during his brief stint as DDR-Premier (before he too was exposed as a Stasi informant).

What is interesting about Angela's formative years is the utter banality and conformity of her life. While the Perestroika movement was shaking the foundation of the GDR and led to a creative renaissance with novels (Jurek Becker), films and theater(Plenzdorf) , Angela was blithely studying physics at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig, where she was active in the SED youth organization. Fellow students recall that Angela was Secretary for Agitation and Propaganda and procured theater tickets for her comrades, but her files from that period have mysteriously vanished.

Her one act of rebellion against her father occured after Die Wende when she joined the new party Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA), started by another Stasi informant Wofgang Schnur. As Langguth points out, this was a shrewd move on her part, since she could hedge her bets by not joining one of the West parties should the DDR have remained a separate country. After Lothar de Maiziere made her his deputy spokesperson and the DA became subsumed in the Christian Democrats, Angela caught the attention of Helmut Kohl and the rest is history. Angela Merkel - a daughter of Stalinist privilege, now the leader of the conservative CDU and quite possibly Germany's next chancellor.

Strange bedfellows indeed! Oscar Lafontaine, evidently emboldened by recent polls showing a surge of support for the new Linkspartei, outlines the conditions of a possible coalition government with the Social Democrats and the Greens. Top condition: Schröder and Fischer must go:

Schröder of course is incensed and rejects any cooperation with "den zwei Gesellen" (Lafontaine and Gysi). [this recalls Bismarck's demonizing the Social Democrats 125 years ago as "vaterlandlose Gesellen" - unpatriotic goons. In fact, Schröder's reaction to his erstwhile comrade Lafontaine and the Linkspartei reminds me of the almost irrational animosity of Bismarck to the socialists: (Edward Crankshaw, Bismarck - p. 359:

The depth of Bismarck's hatred of Socialism is rarely stressed as it should be. There was a strain of insanity running through it ...in fact, it was elemental.]

But there are others in the SPD who are not consumed with irrational hatred and can look at the numbers with a cold eye. Looking at the falling poll numbers for the CDU/FDP (under 50% as of Friday) the SPD representative Sigrid Skarpelis-Sperk said: "Should the Union and the FDP not be able to achieve a majority, then we have to consider a Red-Red-Green coalition."

July 24, 2005

The fact that the "shoot to kill" policy of the London authorities resulted in the death of an innocent Brazilian student has cast a pall over everything else this weekend. Der Spindoktor reflects on the damage that has already been inflicted on our freedoms by the terrorists.

Examples of "collateral damage" abound. Why do the police in Bavaria and North Rhein Westfalis maintain a database on presumed gays and lesbians in those states? What does an individual's sexual orientation have to do with state security? The situation is reminiscent of the Pink List (Rosa Lista)used by the Nazis to persecute homosexuals. (Note: so far no commentary on the Web site of the LSU (Lesben u.Schwule in der Union) - the sister organization to the self-loathing Log Cabin Republicans. )

More on the London shoot-to-kill tragedy by in inestimable Juan Cole on his blog this morning:

The tragedy of the death of Menezes is a deliberate outcome of al-Qaeda tactics. The organization is attempting to spread fear and hatred, and knows that the Western security agencies and military will often over-react, helping discredit them with Muslims and perhaps others. (The racial profiling aspect of Menezes' death is clear, and has cast a chill on the UK Muslim community).

Last week a group of Republican senators proposed legislation that would bar the military from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross; prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees; and use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new army field manual. Vice President Cheney later met with the senators and warned that the White House would veto any bill that included these provisions against torture, even if it meant vetoing the entire $442 billion Pentagon authorization bill for the 2006 fiscal year. Once again, the Bush administration has come out clearly on the side of torture.

But Cheney can count on growing support from within the ranks of the Republican party. Now a group of enterprising Republicans have started "Club G'itmo" to celebrate torture and the destruction the US constitution

Recently, some Republican congressmen returned from a visit to the detention camp at Guantanamo and raved about the excellent food the prisoners received daily:"They ply the prisoners with rice pilaf, beef burgundy and ice cream". But evidently not all of the prisoners want to eat these gourmet meals provided by the American taxpayers. From RTL NEWS:

Please remember the case of Murat Kurnaz, the young Turkish man from Bremen who has been held for more than two years at Guantanamo without any charges being filed. For Germans readers, pleae consider writing to your nearest American consulate and keeping this young man's case in the public eyes by writing letters to the editor of your local newspaper. For American readers, please write to your representatives in congress. You know, there is absolutely no mystery to the question: Why do they hate us?

July 22, 2005

The election is on for September 18, unless the courts reverse the decision of President Horst Köhler to dissolve the Bundestag. But the outcome is no longer quite as certain as it was just a few weeks ago: the latest poll numbers show a declining support for a CDU/FDP government. Black/Gold now stands at 49% according to today's numbers compared with SPD/Green/Left Party of 48%. Even the Handelsblatt is mentioning the possibility of a CDU/SPD Grand Coalition in view of the surging popularity of the Left Party (Linkspartei).

An interesting analysis of the situation is provided today by Michael Jäger in Freitag. Jäger sees both Merkel and Schröder as losers in the early election. The CDU and SPD have already joined in a "Grand Coalition" of propaganda and disinformation against the Linkspartei. A governing Grand Coalition in Berlin would form the basis of a genuine parliamentary democracy with a true opposition party, and the growing strength of the Linkspartei would finally force the SPD to wake up from its neo-liberal slumber.

July 21, 2005

Like a chapter out of Alice in Wonderland, the neo-fascist weekly Junge Freiheit is presenting itself as the champion of press freedom on its Web site, after it won a court case in the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Court for the Constitution) that it was not subject to sanctions for being a right-wing extremist publication:

In its press release about the case, the court pointed out that some of the documents that were presented against the weekly as anti-consitutional were letters to the editor or contributions from outside individuals, and not the editorial content of the Junge Freiheit journalists. The weekly has vowed to file a lawsuit against the state of North-Rhein Westfalia claiming "millions" of euros in damages for their past actions against Junge Freiheit. Also, the weekly seems to imply the verdict had something to with the waning fortunes of the Red-Green Coalition in Berlin.

July 20, 2005

The New York Timescovers Angela Merkel's visit to Paris yesterday and interprets her comments as spelling the end of the Franco- German axis that Chirac and Schröder worked so hard to establish:

In an earlier briefing with journalists, Mrs. Merkel also played down the importance of the Franco-German alliance, saying France and Germany must not "act above the heads" of smaller countries.

"I was raised in the tradition of Helmut Kohl, who always said you have to see Europe through the smaller countries," she said, referring to the former German chancellor who was also her mentor.

Her statements contrasted with those by Mr. Chirac and Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who meet regularly and hold the Franco-German relationship above all others.

Meanwhile, her party continues to lose ground in the east, which is rather strange considering Merkel is an "Ossi" and should be an appealing candidate to those who feel marginalized:

The Left party has overtaken the CDU to become the most popular in the former East Germany — a blow to Angela Merkel, the conservative leader, who is hoping to capitalise on Schröder’s woes to become Germany’s first female chancellor.

July 18, 2005

The mainstream German media and the established political parties in Germany have joined together in a viscious smear campaign against Oskar Lafontaine and the LInkspartei (the New Left Party). The SPD in Brandenburg labeled Lafontaine a Preacher of Hate (Hassprediger); in Bavaria the CSU has called him a National Communist, while Joscka Fischer compared him to the Austrian right-wing extremist Joerg Haider in an interview with Der Spiegel today. Albrecht Müller points out on his Web site that even the liberal paper Die Zeit has launched a disinformation campaign against Lafontaine and the Linkspartei. As Klaus Hillenbrand writes in taz today, this is a coordinated demonization of Lafontaine and the Linkspartei:

The fact is, Lafontaine is resonating with many voters in Germany: they no longer feel represented by the "establishment parties" (Greens included). They can see through the "reforms" being thrust upon them by the SPD/CDU; these will only benefit corporations, their management, and large corporate shareholders (not to mention the locusts). Even the namesake of the Hartz IV labor reforms - Peter Hartz - has been forced to resign from the Volkwagen management board in disgrace because of a scandal involving bribes. The efforts by Fischer and others to paint Lafontaine and his supporters as neo-Nazis will fail; the smear campaign will backfire and result in more voters switching to the Linkspartei. The situation reminds me of how in 2003 the two political parties in the US as well as the mainstream Media attacked Howard Dean when he had the courage to speak the truth about the US invasion of Iraq. Name-calling begins when there is a clear lack of ideas.